Serial Entrepreneur From Finland: Verto CEO Hannu Verkasalo (Part 1)

Hannu has done three companies, including the one that he is doing now – Verto Analytics. We love stories of successful entrepreneurs from different parts of the world, and this one, from Finland is a wonderful one!

Sramana Mitra: Tell me where you come from, where you were born, raised, and in what kind of background.

Hannu Verkasalo: I’m originally from Finland. I was born in the northern parts of Finland, which is famous for Nokia. I moved to Helsinki to do my university studies. I did quite a bit of different studies in business and technology in Helsinki. About 15 years ago, I started my first company. It was all about mobile apps, which was an industry driven by Nokia at that time. >>>

Long Road to Product-Market Fit: Allan Wille, CEO of KlipFolio (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Absolutely. Serendipity and luck are very big drivers in entrepreneurial success. People who don’t acknowledge that are basically fooling themselves and aggrandizing themselves in undeserved ways.

Allan Wille: That was an easy lesson. I’ll give you another example. The lesson there was, “we were not making any money, and here was an opportunity to make money.” It was very black and white. Making that change was fairly obvious.

Sramana Mitra: How much did you make off that deal?

Allan Wille: That was our very first real deal. I think we made $35,000 on an annual basis. >>>

Long Road to Product-Market Fit: Allan Wille, CEO of KlipFolio (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Your company seemed to have somehow found its stride, but you left. When you left that company, what did you do next?

Allan Wille: It’s a long story. I’ll put out some of the highlights. We started Klipfolio in the fall of 2001. At that time, since all I knew was the funding scenario, the idea was we’re going to go out and raise money. That’s what we did with the first company. Of course, there was no angel and VC in their right mind who was going to invest in a pre-revenue startup. That was a very good lesson for me. >>>

Long Road to Product-Market Fit: Allan Wille, CEO of KlipFolio (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Very typical overfunding, lack of discipline story.

Allan Wille: It really is. I don’t think we’ve seen that kind of feverish pitch to the same degree. We saw IoT and Big Data, and now we’re seeing the same thing with AI. I think there’s a lot of money being thrown at some of these companies, perhaps, prematurely.

Sramana Mitra: There’s plenty of money being thrown around, especially in this whole unicorn phenomenon. You may have seen it already since you follow my work. We’re doing this Debt by Overfunding series right now.

Allan Wille: I’m a big believer that funding at the wrong time can be a kiss of death. >>>

Long Road to Product-Market Fit: Allan Wille, CEO of KlipFolio (Part 1)

Often, it takes a long, long time for a company to hit its stride. Read Allan Wille’s journey of great perseverance.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Allan Wille: I was born here in Canada. Before I turned one, we moved to Switzerland. My father is Swiss and my mother is Canadian. I spent the first 14 years of my life growing up in Switzerland. My dad was a banker. Later on, we moved back to Canada because he wanted to start his own business. That has certainly influenced me. >>>

Growing Organically: Sebastian Kanovich, CEO of dLocal (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You inherited 40 customers from AstroPay. Were you doing prepaid private label cards for these 40 merchants and then you switched that to something else? What was the case for the spin off?

Sebastian Kanovich: First of all, we didn’t want to have a company which was both B2B and B2C. We wanted to have one company serving the end users. That was AstroPay. Then we wanted to have B2B.

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Growing Organically: Sebastian Kanovich, CEO of dLocal (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What was the structure? Did AstroPay put in money into dLocal? How did you financially engineer this?

Sebastian Kanovich: We share most of the shareholders. dLocal shares existing customers from AstroPay. We lost money for one month but after that, we managed to break even. We’ve been profitable since then. We didn’t have to raise any money.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about the business of dLocal. How do you go to market?

Sebastian Kanovich: There are two ways for us to expand. We don’t have end users. We’re a 100% B2B company. One thing we need to do is bring as many merchants as possible to our technology. That’s one part. The other part is to have those same merchants go into as many geographies as possible. We >>>

What Do You Do When You’re Stuck With Your Startup? When Do You Give Up?

Startups are very complicated. Getting to product-market fit is by no means a predictable process. How and when to pivot involves a complicated set of decisions.

First-time entrepreneurs usually are not master strategists.

But persistence is a requirement.

Watch this inspiring 1 minute 23 second video of how Adam Singolda persisted.

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